Beyond the Balance Sheet: How CPAs Can Make Mental Health a Shared Priority

Are you just going through the motions at work? Have you become more apathetic and cynical about your career, relationships, or life in general? Do you find yourself increasingly impatient, anxious, or prone to anger? If so, you’re not alone. These are common symptoms of chronic stress and burnout, which are increasingly impacting white-collar workers, especially those in the accounting profession.

If left unchecked, chronic stress and burnout can also lead to physical symptoms, including brain fog, constant fatigue (no matter how much sleep you get), difficulty falling or staying asleep, frequent headaches, migraines, muscle tension, jaw clenching, digestive issues, loss of appetite, and more.

To properly address these issues, it’s important to recognize that chronic stress and burnout aren’t the same. While stress often involves feeling overwhelmed by many pressures simultaneously, burnout is characterized by feelings of depleted energy, reduced professional efficacy, increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism of one’s job, according to the World Health Organization.

As an example, my former Big Four supervisor shared his experience with burnout before starting his own firm. Like many certified public accountants (CPAs), he worked a ton of overtime, often logging over 80 hours per week and 3,500 hours per year.

“I remember many times coming home just long enough to take a shower and get fresh clothes on before going back to the office,” he confides. “Other times I’d come home after a long day and would just sit in my room and watch TV until my family would find me passed out on the bed still in my work clothes.”

THE PERSISTENCE OF BURNOUT IN THE PROFESSION

Numerous studies give insight into my former supervisor’s experience of working in public accounting. A 2023 study by the AICPA, in collaboration with PwC, found 51% of accounting and finance team leaders feel symptoms of professional burnout. Additionally, a 2022 study by FloQast and the University of Georgia found nearly all (99%) surveyed accountants are suffering from burnout, with more than half (53%) experiencing those symptoms at or above the average level. In fact, 24% of respondents from that survey admitted to medium-high or high levels of burnout.

As CPAs, we must juggle tight deadlines, complex financial regulations, and intense scrutiny from clients and authorities. The pressure to be precise and error-free is immense, since even small mistakes can have serious financial or legal consequences. Further, many of us are drawn to the profession because we want to help people and always be available for them. That often means sacrificing our own welfare.

What’s more disturbing is that these chronic overwork conditions are pretty much accepted by our colleagues. According to my firm’s—Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals—annual career satisfaction survey, nearly one-third (30%) of respondents routinely work 60-plus hours per week during busy season. Yet, only 7% believe they’re working longer hours than their peers and only 14% think their jobs are more stressful than the average CPA’s. Ouch!

MY PERSONAL BATTLE WITH STRESS AND MENTAL HEALTH

I too have suffered from the burnout culture that persists in the profession.

When I co-founded Tri-Merit in 2007, it was exhilarating to watch our firm grow so quickly. It was rewarding to see how word got out about our flexible hours, work-from-anywhere culture, and “no a-holes” hiring policy. But I was burning the candle at both ends trying to be the firm’s managing partner and chief rainmaker. For years, I toughed it out. That was until I had two strokes four days apart in 2014. I was 51 years old.

Physically, I recovered quickly, but I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, depression, and feelings of hopelessness for the next five years. Eventually, I got the help I needed, and I stepped aside from the firm’s day-to-day operations to focus on being an “industry evangelizer” about specialty tax credits and mental health.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

One of the upsides of addressing my mental health challenges is that I’ve gained so much knowledge about the tools that can help others.

The best thing firm leaders can do, no matter the firm’s size, is make mental health resources readily available to all employees— and remove the stigma around accessing them. Resources could include employee assistance programs, access to counseling services, or allowing employees to take “mental health days” without fear of judgment or loss of vacation days.

Every year, our firm’s career satisfaction survey finds that CPAs who work at firms with readily available mental health resources are significantly more likely (most recently, at least 8 percentage points higher) to feel highly satisfied in their careers compared to CPAs working at firms without access to those resources.

In addition to resources, applying these simple stress-reduction techniques can help:

• Disconnect at the end of the day. As Brian Kush, CPA, recommended on my podcast, “The Unique CPA,” accounting professionals should “bookmark” their work at the end of the day rather than rushing to get it all done before heading home. Instead, he suggested creating an “instead plan,” which means intentionally planning activities that have nothing to do with work to avoid getting sucked into work during off hours.
• Set clear boundaries between work and personal time. This is especially important for remote workers. Don’t respond to emails, text messages, or voicemails during your personal time— doing so sets the precedent that you’re always on call. Tri-Merit’s career satisfaction survey found that nearly 70% of CPAs who’ve clearly defined boundaries between work and personal time are highly satisfied in their careers compared to just 31% of CPAs whose work and personal boundaries are blurred.
• Improve your time management. Don’t try to tackle everything on your to-do list. Instead, identify three top priorities for the day to focus on. Let everything else go until you’ve tackled your top three priorities.
• Take frequent breaks. Various research suggests your ability to “focus” may be limited to no more than four to five hours per day. Your brain needs frequent rest.
• Improve self-care. Don’t sit at your desk all day (and that includes for meals). Eat right, get plenty of exercise, rest, meditate, and go for walks (leaving the phone behind).
• Celebrate hobbies and passions outside of work. Make sure each team member’s hobbies and passions are widely known to colleagues (consider including them in their bios on the firm’s website). Tri-Merit’s career satisfaction survey found that nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents who work at firms where their outside passions and interests are widely known to colleagues are highly satisfied in their careers compared to less than one-third (31%) of respondents working at firms where few details about their outside interests are shared.

Another tactic is to track self-care activities versus mental health liabilities, thinking of them from a positive and negative perspective. For example:

• Self-care activities are the things you’re doing right—the positives (i.e., exercising, unplugging after work, taking breaks during the workday, and enjoying personal hobbies).
• Mental health liabilities are the things that need improvement— the negatives (i.e., taking calls during weekends, not spending enough time outdoors, and dealing with stressful clients).

Create a balance sheet that separates both into two separate columns. Next, add up your self-care activities and your mental health liabilities. From there, subtract self-care activities from mental health liabilities to determine your net retained energy score. If you or someone on your team has a negative net retained energy score, especially a deficit of three or more, they may be at risk of burnout and mental health challenges. Don’t let this go ignored.

Despite the long hours and occasional high stress, the accounting profession has always been a supportive community—someone is always a phone call, text message, or email away.

As a profession, it’s important that we—CPAs and CPA firm leaders— share the responsibility of prioritizing a culture that encourages employees to ask for help. From my experience, doing so creates happier, healthier employees that are more likely to stay, be highly productive, and refer others to your firm—and your clients will notice too.